Useful tips and thoughts about video and audio production from a person who's done it as a professional for many years.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Connecting a Microphone To Your Camera

I am writing this because I was asked the question, “How do
you plug a microphone into a camera?”

Most cameras have a microphone built in
for recording sound. The reason this works well is because it is a
complete, closed system.As soon
as you plug a microphone into your camera, you open up the system and can potentially
introduce some problems. These problems can be anything from recording worse sound
(than just using the built-in microphone) to recording no sound at all.

The main reason you would plug a microphone
into a camera is to get the microphone closer to the sound you are recording
(through the use of a cable or a wireless system). Other reasons include:
keeping the sound recording consistent when the camera is moving or to take
advantage of different types of (or better quality) microphones.

What I'd like to do is share what has
worked for me.In this post I will
give you the most basic information on the subject.Successfully connecting and using an external microphone
with a camera can become a very complex topic (there are a number of different
types of camera audio inputs and many different types of microphones, therefore
the combination of possibilities is huge and way beyond the scope of this blog
post).

Please feel free to ask me
specific questions by commenting below.

To connect a microphone to a camera
you'll need to have a cable that has the same type of connector (of the
opposite gender [yes, there are male and female connectors]) as the camera’s
microphone input. Also, you'll need to have a cable with the same type of
connector (again with the opposite gender) as your microphone. Sometimes
these are the same cable and sometimes you will need an adapter in-line between
the two (depending on the camera and type of microphone you are using).

Plug the microphone into the cable that
fits it and then the other end into the camera directly (or, if necessary, into
the adapter and then plug a cable from the adapter into the camera).I recommend you use as few adapters as
possible, because each component of a microphone to cable to camera system has
the possibility of malfunctioning and can make troubleshooting more complex
than necessary.Many times
plugging a cable into the camera disconnects the built-in microphone, so (if
your camera is compatible with the microphone you plugged in to it) just use
the camera as normal and you should be good to go.If not, then we need to talk.

Remember to always use headphones to
monitor the sound as you are setting up and recording.If your camera does not have a
headphone output, make test recordings and listen to the results through a
playback system that has headphone capability.This will allow to verify that you are getting good, clean
(not noisy or distorted) audio.

I welcome your questions and will do my
best to help you as best I can.